Digital Commons Network^™

Uncertainty In Predictions Of Disease Spread And Public Health Responses To Bioterrorism And Emerging Diseases, Bret D. Elderd, Vanja M. Dukic, Greg Dwyer

Faculty Publications

Concerns over bioterrorism and emerging diseases have led to the widespread use of epidemic models for evaluating public health strategies. Partly because epidemic models often capture the dynamics of prior epidemics remarkably well, little attention has been paid to how uncertainty in parameter estimates might affect model predictions. To understand such effects, we used Bayesian statistics to rigorously estimate the uncertainty in the parameters of an epidemic model, focusing on smallpox bioterrorism. We then used a vaccination model to translate the uncertainty in the model parameters into uncertainty in which of two vaccination strategies would provide a better response to …

Emergency Nurses' Perceptions Of Obstacles And Supportive Behaviors In End-Of-Life Care, Sondra Heaston, Renea L. Beckstrand, A. Elaine Bond, Sheri P. Palmer

Faculty Publications

Introduction: Little is known about emergency nurses' perceptions of either obstacles or supportive behaviors for providing end-of life (EOL) care to dying patients. The purpose of this study was to determine the perceived obstacles and supportive behaviors in providing EOL care to dying patients in emergency departments.

Methods: In this survey research, a 73-item questionnaire regarding EOL care was mailed to a geographically dispersed national random sample of 300 members of the Emergency Nurses Association. Descriptive statistics were calculated for the 54 Likert-type items and demographic items. Two open-ended questions were analyzed using content analysis.

Results: Returns after 3 mailings …

African-American Mitochondrial Dnas Often Match Mtdnas Found In Multiple African Ethnic Groups, Bert Ely, Jamie Lee Wilson, Fatimah Jackson, Bruce A. Jackson

Faculty Publications

Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) haplotypes have become popular tools for tracing maternal ancestry, and several companies offer this service to the general public. Numerous studies have demonstrated that human mtDNA haplotypes can be used with confidence to identify the continent where the haplotype originated. Ideally, mtDNA haplotypes could also be used to identify a particular country or ethnic group from which the maternal ancestor emanated. However, the geographic distribution of mtDNA haplotypes is greatly influenced by the movement of both individuals and population groups. Consequently, common mtDNA haplotypes are shared among multiple ethnic groups. We have studied the distribution of mtDNA …

Spatial Confidentiality And Gis: Re-Engineering Mortality Locations From Published Maps About Hurricane Katrina, Andrew J. Curtis, Jacqueline W. Mills, Michael Leitner

Faculty Publications

Background: Geographic Information System (GIS) can provide valuable insight into patterns of human activity. Online spatial display applications, such as Google Earth, can democratise this information by disseminating it to the general public. Although this is a generally positive advance for society, there is a legitimate concern involving the disclosure of confidential information through spatial display. Although guidelines exist for aggregated data, little has been written concerning the display of point level information. The concern is that a map containing points representing cases of cancer or an infectious disease, could be re-engineered back to identify an actual residence. This is …

Adulthood: New Terrain, E Michael Brady Phd

Faculty Publications

The article reviews the book Adulthood: New Terrain, edited by Mary Alice Wolf.

Taxing Development: The Law And Economics Of Traffic Impact Fees, John B. Estill, Benjamin Powell, Edward Stringham

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Rules For Radicals: A Politics Of Patent Law, Kali Murray

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Physical Activities In Adolescent Girls: Variability In Energy Expenditure, Karin A. Pfeiffer, Kathryn H. Schmitz, Robert G. Mcmurray, Margarita S. Treuth, David M. Murray, Russell R. Pate

Faculty Publications

Background - Understanding interindividual variability of energy expended in common activities is important for determining precise estimates of energy expenditure in surveillance studies and clinical trials. The purpose of this study was to describe the variability in energy expenditure for selected physical activities among adolescent girls.

Methods - Seventy-four adolescent girls (aged 13 to 14 years) participated in this cross-sectional investigation. Data were collected in 2001 and analyzed in 2004. Energy expenditure was measured by indirect calorimetry for ten activities and during a submaximal cycle ergometer test, which was used to estimate cardiorespiratory fitness. Variability in energy expended for the …

Forward: Symposium On Interdisciplinary Perspectives On Bankruptcy Reform, Michelle A. Cecil

Faculty Publications

In 2003, over 1.6 million consumers filed for bankruptcy protection, surpassing the previous record of 1.5 million bankruptcy filings set just one year earlier. In an effort to reverse the spiraling upward trend of consumer bankruptcies, and to prevent abusive debtors from using the bankruptcy system to avoid paying their debts, in April, 2005, Congress voted overwhelmingly in favor of passing the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005 (BAPCPA). Widely heralded as the most sweeping bankruptcy reform legislation in over a quarter of a century, BAPCPA was designed in large part to force debtors with the ability …

Estimation Of The Rigid-Body Motion From Three-Dimensional Images Using A Generalized Center-Of-Mass Points Approach, B. Feng, P. P. Bruyant, P. H. Pretorius, R. D. Beach, H. C. Gifford, J. Dey, M. A. Gennert, M. A. King

Faculty Publications

We present an analytical method for the estimation of rigid-body motion in sets of three-dimensional (3-D) SPECT and PET slices. This method utilizes mathematically defined generalized center-of-mass points in images, requiring no segmentation. It can be applied to compensation of the rigid-body motion in both SPECT and PET, once a series of 3-D tomographic images are available. We generalized the formula for the center-of-mass to obtain a family of points comoving with the object's rigid-body motion. From the family of possible points we chose the best three points which resulted in the minimum root-mean-square difference between images as the generalized …

Effects Of Long-Term Hypoxia On Enzymes Of Carbohydrate Metabolism In The Gulf Killifish, Fundulus Grandis, Mery L. Mártinez, Christie Landry, Ryan Boehm, Steve Manning, Bernard B. Rees

Faculty Publications

The goal of the current study was to generate a comprehensive, multi-tissue perspective of the effects of chronic hypoxic exposure on carbohydrate metabolism in the Gulf killifish Fundulus grandis. Fish were held at approximately 1.3 mg l(-1) dissolved oxygen (similar to 3.6 kPa) for 4 weeks, after which maximal activities were measured for all glycolytic enzymes in four tissues (white skeletal muscle, liver, heart and brain), as well as for enzymes of glycogen metabolism (in muscle and liver) and gluconeogenesis (in liver). The specific activities of enzymes of glycolysis and glycogen metabolism were strongly suppressed by hypoxia in white skeletal …

The Voting Rights Act Of 1965: A Selected Annotated Bibliography, Terrye Conroy

Faculty Publications

Several remedial or "special" provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which were enacted as temporary measures and were set to expire in August 2007 if not reauthorized by Congress, were recently extended for another twenty-five years. Ms. Conroy offers a selected bibliography of resources to introduce researchers to the issues involved in the debate over the Act's reauthorization and its future implementation.

Sanctuary Principles For The Successful Church Community, Roy Gane

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Palazzolo, The Public Trust, And The Property Owner's Reasonable Expectations: Takings And The South Carolina Marsh Island Bridge Debate, Erin Ryan

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Multiracial Identity And Affirmative Action, Nancy Leong

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Fcc V. Wncn Listeners Guild: An Old-Fashioned Remedy For What Ails Current Judicial Review Law, Charles H. Koch Jr.

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Crystals, Mud, Bapcpa, And The Structure Of Bankruptcy Decisionmaking, R. Wilson Freyermuth

Faculty Publications

A critical feature of any legal system is its formal dispute resolution mechanism. From the perspective of a transactions lawyer, the dispute resolution process should be structured to accomplish (or at least contribute positively toward) doctrinal clarity.

Fabrication And Characterization Of Poly(Propylene Fumarate) Scaffolds With Controlled Pore Structures Using 3-Dimensional Printing And Injection Molding, Kee-Won Lee, Shanfeng Wang, Lichun Lu, Esmaiel Jabbari, Bradford L. Currier, Michael J. Yaszemski

Faculty Publications

Poly(propylene fumarate) (PPF) is an injectable, biodegradable polymer that has been used for fabricating preformed scaffolds in tissue engineering applications because of in situ crosslinking characteristics. Aiming for understanding the effects of pore structure parameters on bone tissue ingrowth, 3-dimensional (3D) PPF scaffolds with controlled pore architecture have been produced in this study from computer-aided design (CAD) models. We have created original scaffold models with 3 pore sizes (300, 600, and 900 µm) and randomly closed 0%, 10%, 20%, or 30% of total pores from the original models in 3 planes. PPF scaffolds were fabricated by a series steps involving …

Fiduciary Foundations Of Administrative Law, Evan J. Criddle

Faculty Publications

An enduring challenge for administrative law is the tension between the ideal of democratic policymaking and the ubiquity of bureaucratic discretion. This Article seeks to reframe the problem of agency discretion by outlining an interpretivist model of administrative law based on the concept of fiduciary obligation in private legal relations such as agency, trust, and corporation. Administrative law, like private fiduciary law, increasingly relies upon a tripartite framework of entrustment, residual control, and fiduciary duty to demarcate a domain of bounded agency discretion. To minimize the risk that agencies will abuse their entrusted discretion through opportunism or carelessness, administrative law …

A Fourier Transformation Based Method To Mine Peptide Space For Antimicrobial Activity, Vijayaraj Nagarajan, Navodit Kaushik, Beddhu Murali, Chaoyang Zhang, Sanyogita Lakhera, Mohamed O. Elasri, Youping Deng

Faculty Publications

Background

Naturally occurring antimicrobial peptides are currently being explored as potential candidate peptide drugs. Since antimicrobial peptides are part of the innate immune system of every living organism, it is possible to discover new candidate peptides using the available genomic and proteomic data. High throughput computational techniques could also be used to virtually scan the entire peptide space for discovering out new candidate antimicrobial peptides.

Result

We have identified a unique indexing method based on biologically distinct characteristic features of known antimicrobial peptides. Analysis of the entries in the antimicrobial peptide databases, based on our indexing method, using Fourier transformation …

Stereochemical And Regiochemical Trends In The Selective Detection Of Saccharides, Shan Jiang, Jorge O. Escobedo, Kyu Kwang Kim, Onur Alptürk, George K. Samoei, Sayo O. Fakayode, Isiah M. Warner, Oleksandr Rusin, Robert M. Strongin

Faculty Publications

Several discreet sugar-boronate complexes exist in solution. This is due to the complex equilibria between isomeric species of even the simplest monosaccharides. In the current investigation, we determine the regio- and stereochemical features of the various equilibrating sugar isomers that induce signal transduction in boronic acid chemosensors such as 1 as well as 2 and 3. We present a unique example of a chemosensor (1) that is selective for ribose, adenosine, nucleotides, nucleosides, and congeners. As a result of this study, we are able to predict and achieve selective fluorescence and colorimetric responses to specific disaccharides as a consequence of …

“Arrogance Cloaked As Humility” And The Majoritarian First Amendment: The Free Speech Legacy Of Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, Edward L. Carter, Brad Clark

Faculty Publications

In his 19 years as Chief Justice of theUnited States, William H. Rehnquist voted in favor of the individual expression interest asserted in approximately one-fifth of the Speech Clause cases heard by the Supreme Court. Meanwhile, he opposed protecting those constitutional interests in approximately two-thirds of the speech cases during that time. (His votes evidenced both speech-protective and non-protective elements just more than 10 percent of the time). This manuscript analyzes the Rehnquist jurisprudence in comparison with that of his two immediate predecessors as Chief, Warren Burger and Earl Warren. Rehnquist’s deference to government, reliance on history and formalist categorization …

Post-Thaw Amendment Of Cryopreserved Sperm For Use In Artificial Insemination Of A Viviparous Fish, The Green Swordtail Xiphophorus Helleri, Qiaoxiang Dong, Changjiang Huang, Terrence R. Tiersch

Faculty Publications

Sperm cryopreservation protocols have been developed for live-bearers such as the green swordtail Xiphophorus helleri and the platyfish Xiphophorus couchianus. Despite the high post-thaw motility (∼ 75%) obtained in both species, the requirements of sperm storage within the female reproductive tract coupled with the process of internal fertilization place functional demands upon cryopreserved sperm samples far beyond those of oviparous species. The purpose of this study was to facilitate the artificial insemination process with cryopreserved sperm of X. helleri through evaluation of parameters related to sperm quality after thawing. Specifically, this study evaluated the effects on motility for fresh and …

"To Offer My Heart” (A Trans. Of “Ofrecer Mi Corazón” By Nancy Alsonso), Anne Fountain

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

A Research Agenda For Studying Open Source I: A Multi-Level Framework, Ashley R. Davis, Fred Niederman, Martina E. Greiner, Donald Wynn, Paul T. York

Faculty Publications

This paper presents a research agenda for studying information systems using open source software A multi-level research model is developed at five discrete levels of analysis: (1) the artifact; (2) the individual; (3) the team, project, and community; (4) the organization; and (5) society. Each level is discussed in terms of key issues within the level. Examples are based on prior research. In a companion paper, [Niederman, et al 2006], we view the agenda through the lens of referent discipline theories.

An Improved Cloning Strategy For Chromatin-Immunoprecipitation-Derived Dna Fragments, Jennifer M. Huang, Jeong Do Kim, Hana Kim, Joomyeong Kim

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Promoting Physical Activity In Children And Youth: A Leadership Role For Schools: A Scientific Statement From The American Heart Association Council On Nutrition, Physical Activity, And Metabolism (Physical Activity Committee) In Collaboration With The Councils On Cardiovascular Disease In The Young And Cardiovascular Nursing, Russell R. Pate, Michael G. Davis, Thomas N. Robinson, Elaine J. Stone, Thomas L. Mckenzie, Judith C. Young

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Effects Of Resistant Starch, A Non-Digestible Fermentable Fiber, On Reducing Body Fat, Michael J. Keenan, Jun Zhou, Kathleen L. Mccutcheon, Anne M. Raggio, H. Gale Bateman, Emily Todd, Christina K. Jones, Richard T. Tulley, Sheri Melton, Roy J. Martin, Maren Hegsted

Faculty Publications

Objective: To assess the effects of energy dilution with non-fermentable and fermentable fibers on abdominal fat and gut peptide YY (PYY) and glucagon-like peptide (GLP)-1 expressions, three rat studies were conducted to: determine the effects of energy dilution with a non-ferment-able fiber, compare similar fiber levels of fermentable and non-fermentable fibers, and compare similar metabolizable energy dilutions with fermentable and non-fermentable fibers. Research Methods and Procedures: In Study 1, rats were fed one of three diets with different metabolizable energy densities. In Study 2, rats were fed diets with similar fiber levels using high amylose-resistant cornstarch (RS) or methylcellulose. In …

Conflicts Of Interest, David J. Cherrington

Faculty Publications

Our research on theft and fraud has taught us three important lessons about conflicts of interest: first, they are much more prevalent than one would expect, second, they are much more serious than one might think, and third, some of them can’t be eliminated.

The Property Tax In The Slovak Republic: Major Reforms And Striking Results, Phillip J. Bryson

Faculty Publications

This article is based on a presentation given on August 24, 2005, at the International Property Tax Institute’s 8th International Conference on Property Tax in Transition held in Prague, Czech Republic.